Ruth Borisch

The five-and-a-half-year-old Ruth Borisch cried and smiled, "cuddled closely to her father," according to a note from the responsible district office of Berlin-Friedrichshain. She could not walk or stand, did not eat by herself, "everything must be spoon-fed to her in puréed form." Meanwhile: "The younger sibling comes up short because Ruth requires special care and attention." There was evidently pressure from the welfare office to remove Ruth Borisch from the family.

The local physician Dr. med. Franz Sobolowski wrote on a prescription slip dated June 7, 1932, that Ruth Borisch, due to a severe intellectual disability and paralysis, was urgently in need of admission to the neurology department of the children’s hospital in Berlin-Buch. On the reverse side, he noted that Ruth Borisch had "almost regularly received 0.05 Luminal" (an anti-epileptic and sedative) each evening due to seizures. According to another note on the prescription, a request for family assistance had already been filed.

Ruth Borisch’s father was a labourer, as the mother indicated upon admission. Her niece later reported that he was a carpenter. The family was considered Catholic and lived on Rüdersdorfer Strasse in Berlin’s Friedrichshain district. Ruth Borisch had a younger sister (born in 1931), incorrectly listed in the file as a “brother,” who at the time was one and a quarter years old.

The photo of her in the pram shortly before her admission to the children’s hospital in Berlin-Buch in 1932 not only shows that she could neither stand nor walk at the time, but also illustrates the care of the family for the neatly dressed child.

Ruth Borisch had already survived pneumonia at the age of two. Seizures had been occurring for a year and a half. She did not speak and only made sounds. She was admitted to the children’s hospital in Buch on June 18, 1932. Her mother was presented with a form to indicate her “consent to operations and protective measures,” which she signed.

Ruth Borisch contracted diphtheria at the children’s hospital in September 1932, running a fever of over 40 degrees Celsius. Only at the end of September 1932, after four negative diphtheria tests, was she considered recovered. During this time, she also suffered a non-specified “water accident.” She was described as “constantly crying out loudly” and considered restless. She received sedatives and, according to her medical history, had to be “force-fed by the nurses.”

On September 30, 1932, Ruth Borisch was transferred to the inpatient home Tannenhof of the Deaconess Institute Teltow belonging to the Wittenau Sanatoriums (Wittenauer Heilstätten) in. At the beginning of 1932, a ward for children with intellectual disabilities had been established there, as the facility originally intended for “psychopathic” children stood otherwise empty due to a conflict with the State Youth Welfare Office about custodial care. In Teltow, Ruth Borisch continued to suffer minor and major seizures and displayed “screaming fits,” which were treated with anti-epileptic drugs such as Bromide, Brominal, and Luminal. For the first time in 1933, “athetoid movements” were described – twisting movements interpreted as a sign of brain disease. Ruth Borisch received weekly visits from her parents, suggesting a close family relationship.

By autumn 1935, however, Ruth Borisch was experiencing several seizures daily and cried frequently, making her apparently too much of a burden for the institution. On November 28, she was transferred to the Landesanstalt (National Institute) Lübben. At the time, Ruth Borisch was 114 cm tall, weighed 20.5 kg, had a short head and blond hair. Her eyes were described as light grey in her round face. The physician there even attempted to determine her supposed “race:” “perhaps East Baltic with Nordic elements.”

Ruth Borisch resisted and screamed upon being admitted to the new, unfamiliar institution. An examination of her legs was not possible due to her resistance. She kept her legs “pulled closely to her body,” as noted in her medical record. Apparently, she was highly sensitive and screamed terribly when attempts were made to touch her. In Lübben, she was classified as being “mentally very profoundly” impaired and remained bedridden. She was not mobilized and, at best, sat up by herself. No “mental development” was recorded. In spring 1936, she suffered from influenza. She was considered “unclean” and in need of care. She was fed with puréed food.

On June 8, 1938, Ruth Borisch was transferred “for external reasons,” according to the medical history, to the Landesanstalt Brandenburg-Görden. At this point, the facility at Görden had already become the new intake institution for children diagnosed with intellectual disabilities in the Berlin-Brandenburg area. Following the redistribution of underage patients from the Brandenburg institutions due to the dissolution of the Landesanstalt Potsdam in summer 1938, the provincial administration relocated particularly children from Lübben to Görden – including Ruth Borisch. The children were thoroughly examined, and, where not yet done, a “family pedigree chart” (Sippentafel) was created, in her case according to a note dated November 27, 1939. Her intellectual disability was deemed “congenital,” as already noted on the file folder from the Wittenauer Heilstätten.

Ruth Borisch, now eleven years old, had to adapt to the newly established children’s ward in Görden. She was examined neurologically, serologically, and bacteriologically by the institutional physician Friederike Pusch (1905–1980) and received a diphtheria vaccination, part of the standard diagnostic intake procedures.

On May 24, 1939, an encephalography was performed on Ruth Borisch: in this examination, cerebrospinal fluid was removed and air injected to obtain a more spatial X-ray image of the brain. This painful procedure revealed a moderate enlargement of one of the “anterior horns,” but otherwise yielded only blurred images that did not allow for a more precise diagnosis. A detailed “neurological re-examination” followed on June 1, 1939. The focus was especially on her inability to walk. A weakness on her left side was diagnosed.

By the end of August 1939, no mental progress was noted. “She must be fed, but eats her portion without the use of force.” This entry points to the harsh regime Ruth Borisch was subjected to at the Görden institution. The evaluation criteria for the young patients inquired whether they could eat, walk, speak, and keep themselves clean. Ruth Borisch was unable to do any of these things. Although she was not independently mobile, she managed to maintain her body weight of 20.5 kg from February to August 1939. However, compared to the 23.5 kg noted in 1936 for the then eight-year-old, this already represented significant weight loss. The stability in weight did not last: the weight chart in her medical record shows that Ruth Borisch’s body weight began declining in September 1939, reaching just 17.5 kg by February 1940. She had been placed in Ward CF 1 in Görden, the very ward where many children and adolescents would later die. She was clearly not adequately cared for. Ruth Borisch suffered from hunger.

The final entry from March 24, 1940, the day of her death, begins with: “Ruth’s mental abilities have not further developed.” She had been noted for “unmotivated screaming” during the night. Her weight loss was laconically explained as due to reduced “food intake.” “Since yesterday, Ruth has been suffering from pneumonia, which today led to a letalis exitus.”

The autopsy report No. 84 from 1940 described Ruth Borisch as a “13-year-old child, roughly age-appropriate in height, in a state of severely reduced nutrition.” Her brain was removed and histologically examined by the physician Werner Eicke (1911–1988), who observed “diffuse ganglion cell loss in the cortex and striatum.” Brain tissue slices were made from Ruth Borisch’s brain, three images of which were attached to her medical file.

The prepared specimens became part of the collection of neuropathologist Julius Hallervorden (1882–1965) from the brain research institute of Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft and most likely accompanied the institute’s relocations to Dillingen in 1944, to Giessen in 1946, and later to Frankfurt. The final whereabouts of the specimens remain unclear; they were probably buried in 1990 at Munich’s Waldfriedhof (Forest Cemetery) together with other specimens.

Ruth Borisch was buried on March 27, 1940, in a “institutional coffin” (Anstaltssarg) at the Görden cemetery. Whether her parents were notified is not apparent from the preserved medical record, as only medical records from the Brandenburg-Görden institution have survived – not the so-called administrative files, in which correspondence with family members would have been included.

The manifest neglect in both care and medical treatment during Ruth Borisch’s time at Görden, the CF 1 ward as a death ward with Friederike Pusch – known in research as a murderous doctor – and the sudden course of death by alleged “pneumonia” strongly suggest that she fell victim to the “child euthanasia” program underway at Görden. Pneumonia, typically induced by administering sedatives such as Luminal, was a common cause of death in this context. The combination of physical and intellectual disability with “athetotic movements” was also a particular research interest of the Görden director, Hans Heinze (1895–1983).

Ruth Borisch’s niece, Manuela Dittrich, who is herself committed to uncovering her aunt’s fate, reports:

“My mother sat on the hospital bed for a long time, beside her sister. She once told me that all the parents’ attention had gone to her sister, and that she had suffered because of it. My mother, Rosemarie Borisch, was born in 1931. She was nine years old when her older sister died. But I never heard her use words like physically or mentally disabled, euthanasia or anything like that. Nothing – only that Ruth was always sick and always in hospitals and then died at the age of thirteen. And that she always felt like all of her mother’s love had died with Ruth.”